


This Song Has No Title

by TeekiJane



Series: The Boys of Summer [23]
Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 23:05:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeekiJane/pseuds/TeekiJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Anne just wanted a substitute babysitter. She didn’t expect to give such good advice in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Song Has No Title

**Author's Note:**

> I’m going to start the thank yous for the series with this story. The first dedication goes to Mama C, who’s listened to plenty of talk about a series and characters she’s never read and heard me whine when I couldn’t get them to go where I wanted them to go. She’s the Mama to end all Mamas. :)

_And each day I learn just a little bit more_  
_I don’t know why but I do know what for_  
_If we’re all going somewhere let’s get there soon_  
_Oh this song’s got no title just words and a tune_  
Elton John, This Song Has No Title

**Mary Anne**

It’s been said that in two years as BSC secretary, I never made a single mistake. I never forgot to pencil in a class, appointment or lesson. I never double-booked a job or forgot to write one down. 

I think that’s why Kristy was even more shocked than I was when I’d agreed to babysit for Harper at the same time I was scheduled to be at the doctor’s office. We weren’t twelve any more, and as Kristy pointed out, “That just isn’t like you, Mary Anne.” 

I told her I’d find a suitable substitute, but that’s easier said than done. Kristy doesn’t let just anyone watch her daughter. They have to have a driver’s license and be CPR trained. Both of us look back at how people would let us care for their infants when we were in middle school and we’re astonished. 

Jeff was my last hope. I’d already checked around with my old friends from my high school days. The few who were still around town were working. I figured if Jeff wasn’t free, maybe one of his friends—one of the triplets or Haley, maybe—would be willing to help out. It was only going to be a couple hours. In Jeff’s case, it would be a good way to get out of the house. I know he’s been going stir-crazy without a car of his own, having to rely on Dad and Sharon and Byron to drive him everywhere. I can definitely relate to that. Ever since Pete’s car died earlier this summer, it’s been dicey. Sometimes, I have to sit around for a couple hours just waiting for him to come pick me up. 

Jeff hadn’t seemed too thrilled when I brought the idea up. “What am I supposed to do with a three year old for a couple hours?” he’d asked. I actually had a few concerns about him hanging out with Harper. He didn’t sound as depressed as he had just a couple days ago when Pete and I had seen him at Dad’s ridiculous ‘family dinner,’ but that didn’t mean he was really up to running through Kristy’s apartment after Harper, who had enough energy for five adults. 

“Just make sure she doesn’t hurt herself, really,” I’d told him. “Honestly, she comes up with enough ideas to entertain herself. That child’s got a wicked imagination and enough toys to start her own toy store.” 

He’d taken a deep breath and I was certain he was about to make up some excuse why he couldn’t. I was desperate. “If you do it, I’ll get you candy, whatever kind you want,” I’d tossed out. 

Jeff had started laughing, just a soft chuckle at first. “Mary Anne,” he’d said after a moment. “I’m not twelve any more. That kind of bribe just doesn’t work on me nowadays.” 

“Well, then, what kind of bribe _does_ work on you these days?” 

The chuckle got louder. “Liquor and condoms are always appreciated,” he’d joked. 

I’d paused for a moment, almost seriously contemplating getting Pete to buy him a bottle of Schnapps. Almost. “C’mon, Jeff, I can’t miss this doctor’s appointment, and I can’t take Harper with me. You’re my last hope,” I’d pleaded. 

Of course, in the end, he’d agreed to help. I’d taken Harper shopping for the morning and given her lunch in the back seat of the car while we’d driven around. Since my doctor’s office is out by Kristy’s place, I’d decided to pick Jeff up and drive him back to Kristy’s house. That way, Harper could play with all her toys and no one had to worry about baby-proofing for her. 

Jeff was sitting outside waiting for me when I arrived. He was looking up toward the sky in a daze as I drove up. Harper was amusing herself with a stuffed horse when I stopped the car. “Hurry up, Auntie Mary Anne!” she called as I honked the horn. “My unicorn wants to fly some more and we need to move!” 

Jeff picked up a duffel bag and scrambled over to the driveway. He climbed into the passenger’s seat and looked into the back seat cautiously, then back at me. “Hey, Jeff,” I said. “Thanks for agreeing to do this.” He shrugged and I started the car back up and turned over my shoulder as I backed down the driveway. “This is Harper. I think you’ve met?” 

Harper looked at me and then Jeff, who was peering at her over the seat as if she might be concealing a bomb in the confines of her car seat. She frowned. “Who’s that?” she asked me. 

“This is my brother, Jeff. You and Jeff are going to play while I go to the doctor.” 

Harper eyed him suspiciously. “Uncle Jeff?” she asked. 

Jeff shook his head and spoke directly to her. “Nope. Just Jeff.” 

Harper leaned forward. “This is my unicorn. His name is Harry.” She held the horse out to Jeff. 

Jeff took the toy seriously and looked it over. “Nice to meet you, Harry,” he said. Harper grinned at him and he handed Harry back to her. 

I smiled at Jeff myself. “She likes you,” I said. “She’s normally a little suspicious of people when she first meets them.” 

Jeff still looked a little nervous. “I’m pretty good with kids,” he said distractedly. 

Harper went back to her game of unicorn play and I looked at Jeff. He was digging around in his bag, searching for something that he wasn’t finding. “How are things?” I asked. 

He is an expert at shrugging. “What things?” he asked. 

“Anything,” I shrugged back at him. “How’s Byron? How’s Dawn? How’s work?” 

He smiled a little. “That’s a lot of questions,” he teased. 

“You don’t have to answer them all,” I said with a smile. “I just thought it would make the trip more pleasant if we chatted.” 

Jeff sighed. “Well, Dawn’s being a pain in my…” he paused and looked into the back seat, as if he’d forgotten Harper was back there. 

I stifled a laugh. “Neck?” I suggested. 

“Right,” he agreed. “I don’t know what her problem is, but she wants to know everything about my life. I mean, every last detail. She keeps asking about my stay in the hospital, my shrink, my meds.” 

I nodded. “I think that she’s just trying to make up for missing a very important part of your life. She feels guilty for not being there for you.” 

He shrugged yet again. “It’s not like she could have done anything anyway. I know I sounded mad at her the other night, but I’m really not. She was just picking at some open wounds at the time. I think it’s great she’s out there living her own life. I can’t wait until I get to do that someday. Of course,” he stopped for a moment and made a face, “knowing my parents, they aren’t going to want me living on my own. I might stop taking my meds, you know.” Jeff looked over at me. My main attention was on the road, but I could see him out of the corner of my eye. “Part of me figures I’ll just get through the next school year. I’ll work and I’ll suffer through the community college and save all my money. And next summer, I can move to North Carolina and get my own place.” 

We stopped at a stop light and I looked over at him. “North Carolina?” 

“Byron’s going to Duke,” he explained. 

I smiled. That explained everything. In fact, he sounded like Pete when he and I were getting ready to go off to college. The only difference was that Pete and I had been dating for about three years, while Jeff and Byron had been going out for about three months. “I thought you said you’d never leave California,” I said. 

“Hopefully this would only be for a few years. Temporary.” 

I nodded. “I don’t blame you for wanting to get out from under your dad’s thumb. Why do you think Pete and I got married so young?” 

I was only kidding, but he took me seriously. He didn’t comment on it, but his tone changed. “Is it hard being married while you’re still in school?” he asked. 

I thought about that. “Yes,” I answered finally. “I can’t compare it to anything except being single. But it is tough sometimes. We have a hard time making ends meet on occasion, and during the school year we hardly see each other. I guess that’s the price we pay for going to school an hour apart from each other.” 

He was silent for a moment. “Why did you decide to get married?” he finally asked. 

I flicked my eyes over to him. “You’re starting to sound like Dawn,” I said with a small smile. “You’re asking all kinds of nosy questions.” 

“Well, we are related,” Jeff joked with a smirk. I didn’t reply so he went on. “I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything,” he said. “I'm just curious. Most of the people I know who marry in their teens either have no idea what they’re doing in life, or she was pregnant and they ‘had to’ get married. You don’t seem to have either of those, uh, ‘qualifications.’” 

I sighed. “No. I definitely wasn’t pregnant when I got married, and Pete and I both have goals and plans.” He kept looking at me quietly, so I went on. “I think it was just the next logical step. We’d missed each other a lot, even though we were only an hour apart.” 

Jeff was serious. “Do you ever regret getting married?” 

I thought about that for a moment. There were definitely days and times—usually when Pete and I were arguing—that I did indeed regret hurrying into the wedding. “Let me answer that by telling you something Kristy says,” I told him. I glanced into the backseat and looked at Harper, who was still playing unicorn with Harry. “When people ask her if she regrets having a baby at seventeen, she always says, ‘I never regret my daughter, but sometimes I wish she’d waited a few years.'” He smiled at that. 

We arrived at Kristy’s place and I gathered all Harper’s things. “Jeff, will you get Harper out? I’ll get the door open.” 

Jeff eyed her warily. “Sure,” he said, climbing out of the car and opening the back door. “Okay, Harper, time to go inside. Can you get out of your seat all by yourself?” Harper nodded and Jeff unbuckled her belt. “How about you let me hold Harry for you and then you and Harry can both fly into the house?” 

Harper grinned at him and handed over the horse. I unlocked the door and held it open. Jeff grabbed her when she stood up and scooped her up under one of his arms. I smiled as he made whooshing noises and swept her into the house. 

Jeff set Harper down on the floor and handed her toy back. She ran off. “I’m gonna go potty,” she called. 

I watched her trot down the hallway. “Let me know if you need any help,” I said. I turned back to Jeff. “Harper’s room is the second door on the right, bathroom’s the first door on the right. She shouldn’t get hungry, but you can cut up an apple and put a little bit of peanut butter on it if she does. She’ll eat about two slices, so either eat the rest ot put it in the fridge in a baggie.” I walked toward the kitchen and Jeff followed. “Emergency numbers are here. Call Kristy first if you need something, but if she doesn’t answer, you can call her mom. Her boyfriend is out of town, so don’t bother calling him. You don’t have to clean up after Harper as long as she keeps the toys in her room. If you decide to play in the living room, we’ll put everything away when I get back, before I take you home. Any questions?” 

Jeff looked a little overwhelmed, but shook his head. “Emergency numbers on fridge. Apple and peanut butter if hungry. Try to keep toys in the bedroom. Think I got it under control.” 

I smiled encouragingly. “I should be back in about an hour, maybe a little longer. I’ll call you if I’m going to be longer than that.” I checked my watch. “I’d better get going. Good luck.” Jeff shrugged. “Bye-bye, Harper! Be good!” I called. 

She popped her head out of the bathroom door, looking disgruntled. “I’m _always_ good!” she shouted back, and then slammed the door behind her. Sometimes, Harper is very much her mother’s daughter. I rolled my eyes at Jeff and opened the front door again. He actually smiled and I heard the door lock click into place after I left. 

***

I don’t know what I expected to find when I came back sixty-five minutes later. Maybe Harper making a giant mess of her bedroom while Jeff was sitting in the living room, playing with whatever he’d been searching for in his bag. Instead, I came inside to find the CD player on, playing a nature CD I’d never heard at a low volume and no one in Harper’s room. “Hello?” I called, a little concerned. 

I walked into the kitchen, where Jeff’s bag was sitting on a chair. “Jeff? Harper?” I called, a little bit louder this time. 

A voice came from the living room. “Shh, Auntie Mary Anne! We’re sleeping in here!” 

I followed Harper’s call and found the couch torn apart. A card table from the corner and the child sized table from her bedroom were set in the middle of the floor, covered in blankets and couch cushions. Harper’s face was peeking through a gap between two blankets. “It’s a tent!” she announced. 

“I see that,” I replied. I looked at the tent with a bit of dismay for a moment, until I realized that the mess would literally take just moments to disassemble and put away. “What have you been doing with your tent?” I asked her. 

“We went fishing and gathered firewood and then we were chased by a bear for a while!” she cried. 

A couch cushion popped out from the other side of the table and Jeff shuffled out of the edge. “We fished in the tub with imaginary poles and fish, and then gathered up all her toys and tried to sort them all out and put them away. I figured if we decided to have a snack, we’d ‘roast’ the apple slices and eat them off forks.” 

I thought back upon the mess that had been Harper’s room when I’d picked her up earlier in the morning and realized that, when I’d peeked in the door while looking for the two of them, it had been pretty clean. “I’m really impressed,” I said, meaning it. 

Jeff looked embarrassed. “We were just having fun, and I thought we might as well make things a little neater while we were at it.” 

I had left Harper’s travel bag—now that she was no longer in diapers, Kristy no longer called it a diaper bag—by the front door and set my purse on top of it when I’d come in. “Hey, Harper, do you want to leave your tent up? You can show Mommy when she gets home.” 

“Yeah!” Harper had climbed back inside the tent and closed the flap behind her. 

I sat down in front of the tent and opened the flap. “Okay, we can leave it up. But I need you to come out now. We have to take Jeff back home.” 

Harper’s face turned stormy. “Nooooooo!” she shrieked. “I don’t want him to go!” 

Jeff glanced at me. “I think someone’s ready for an n-a-p,” he said, rubbing one eye and looking like he could have been talking about himself. 

I nodded. “I’m hoping she’ll s-l-e-e-p on the way back to your place.” 

“No fair spelling things!” Harper cried. 

Jeff looked at me and started to laugh. “C’mere, Harper, and I’ll teach you how to spell some words on the way back to my house.” 

“Will you teach me how to spell poop and pee?” 

I shook my head at him and he smiled an impish smile like he’d had when he was a kid. “Sure, and anything else you want,” he told Harper. 

“Jeff!” 

He ignored me and spoke directly to Harper. “Poop is spelled j-l-a-w.” 

“Jeff!” I repeated. He looked at me. “If you’re going to teach her dirty words, at least teach them to her properly.” He grinned. 

Harper let Jeff carry her back out to the car, as he spelled every assorted “dirty” word she could come up with. By the time we got back on to the street, Harper was singing, making up her own spelling to other words. “M-s-r-v-o spells Mommy, i-y-n-p-q spells Daddy,” she sang. But five minutes into the trip, she was already nodding off. 

I turned to Jeff briefly as Harper went quiet. “You were really good with her. You ever think of doing that for a living?” 

Jeff pretended to be confused. “What? Make tents in people’s living rooms?” 

I didn’t take my eyes off the road. “You could work at a daycare or teach preschool,” I pressed on, despite his sarcasm. 

“Right,” Jeff said, slumping down in his seat. “Because parents really want mentally ill gay men working with their children.” 

I cringed. “Jeff, you _will_ get your meds sorted out. It might take a while, but it will happen. After that, as long as you keep taking them, you probably won’t have too much trouble.” He didn’t reply to that, just slumped a little farther and tucked his head down. He reminded me of Harper just a little bit, when she’s getting ready for a really good pout. “Can I tell you something one of my professors said last year?” Jeff still didn’t respond, so I went on. “He said there’s a difference between having a mental illness and being mentally ill. Having a mental illness is a lifelong issue, but, for most people, if they follow their doctor’s orders, take their medication and keep up with therapy, they’re fine most of the time. You can’t tell what problems people have just by looking at them most of the time, can you?” 

He looked at me sideways. “What’s your major again?” he asked. 

I smirked at him. “Psychology. Remember, I’m going to grad school for a degree in play therapy.” 

“Play therapy. Sounds like a good excuse to never grow up.” 

“Hey,” I said, glad he was joking around with me. “You were the one who was just sitting in a tent made out of blankets. I _know_ that was your idea, not Harper’s.” He held his head up a little and I could see he was actually smiling. “Anyway, I’m hoping to eventually get my doctorate. Dr. Mary Anne Black sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?” 

Jeff sat back up. “Yeah, it does.” He was back to being serious. “I wish I had half the idea you do of where I want to go with my life,” he sighed. “I feel like my life is a piece of sheet music right now…and I’ve never learned to read sheet music. I’m sitting here trying to play an instrument I don’t know how to play, and I don’t know the song.” 

I pulled up to a stop light and looked him over. “I wasn’t kidding before when I said you should work with kids. I think you’d be good at that.” He scoffed and looked out the window. “I don’t think that your…situation…would really be a problem, but if you’re concerned, you could always get a job teaching older kids. There’s less concern there about someone’s sexuality because there’s little to no chance you’ll be changing diapers.” 

Jeff turned to me as the light changed back. “Can you really see me teaching kids and ‘shaping the future of America?’” he asked. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or serious.

“Yes, I really can. If it’s something that _you_ can see too, then go get a teaching degree.” 

He looked straight ahead, his face set and expressionless. “Maybe,” he said eventually, not looking back at me. 

We drove quietly for a while. Harper was still fast asleep when we pulled back up at Dad and Sharon’s house. Jeff hopped out of the car and turned to me. “I’m only in town for a couple more weeks, but let Kristy know that if she needs a sitter and I’m free, I’d be glad to help her out.” 

I smiled at him. “Had a good time, huh?” I teased. 

He smiled back a little. “She’s a really neat kid.” 

I watched as he closed the car door and walked up toward the house. When he was halfway there, I rolled my window down and called out to him. “Hey, Jeff,” I said. He turned around. “I know you’re getting a lot of unsolicited advice from people, and I’m not a professional—yet. I’m just your crazy stepsister, who shows up drunk at holiday parties and got married way too young. But think about what I said.” He just nodded. 

By the time Kristy made it home, I was late picking Pete up from work. The two of us decided we weren’t in the mood to cook, so we went out to eat. We got home and put in a movie, ready a quiet evening in front of the television. Pete poured some wine and got everything set up for the two of us, and I excused myself to change into something more comfortable. After I put on my pajamas, I took a quick peek at my email, which I hadn’t checked all day. There was only one new message, so I decided to go ahead and read it. 

To: mablack83  
From: superjeff15  
Subject: thanks  
hey Mary Anne i just wanted to say thank u for the advice u gave me earlier. i might look into getting into a teacher program when i get back to california. think i could maybe teach middle school?  
thanks again for being supportive. i owe u one.  
love, Jeff


End file.
